"The proportion of people working part-time because they can't find a full-time job is now falling, but remains relatively high."

The number of people in full-time work rose 0.3% to reach 18.9 million, as opposed to 6.7 million in part-time work, a rise of 0.6% in the quarter.

During Prime Minister's questions in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr Cameron said that the number of people in full-time employment had risen.

"We are growing the economy and we've got more people in work," Mr Cameron said.

Mr Cameron added that increasing the number of apprenticeships was "an absolutely vital part of our long-term economic plan".

However, the Labour party said that hundreds of thousands of young people remained unemployed.

"While this fall in overall unemployment is welcome, today's figures show that young people and the long-term unemployed are being left behind," said Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves.

"Under David Cameron, over 850,000 young people are unemployed and there are still over 100,000 more people out of work for two years or more than in 2010," she added.

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